I was supposed to be taking the narrowboat to a winter mooring in Warwickshire but for reasons I explain in this video, I didn’t. Instead of cancelling the trip though – as I had invited a friend along to show me how to do canalboating properly – we went for a two-day cruise to Braunston. This is the video of that trip.

A brief technical interlude before the video of the trip to Braunston because my battery charger packed up and suddenly the boat had no usable power. So in this video I explain how I diagnosed and resolved the problem.

After months of waiting while my house was sold, the boat was fettled and lots of boring stuff was dealt with, it was finally time to relaunch my narrowboat into the canal and take it out for a quick trip!

Vlog 8 and I spend my first night aboard the canal boat – still on land! There’s all kinds of squeaks and groans and bumps in the night and they’re not from me. No, it’s nothing saucy, don’t get your hopes up…

Not content with my “patch it and hope” painting of the rusty spots along the gunwales of my canal boat as seen in the last episode, I decided to try to do it properly. This did not entirely come to fruition, as I explain in this video.

At long last the time has come for the excellent Justin Green of JG Marine to visit the boat and do lots of work on it including an engine service (oil, oil filter, air filter, fuel filter etc), add the Adverc charge controller, change the old engine mounts and much more.

It’s now 3 weeks since the narrowboat became properly mine and yet I’m still not aboard and still not afloat. It’s OK, there are various reasons for this. I knew it would take a little time. Oh my, but it’s very frustrating!

This is a tour of my canal boat from top to tail. It’s still on chocks at a marina whilst I line up some maintenance to be done on it but will hopefully take to the water again in a few weeks – just in time for winter!